Changing and Developing Workouts

 
Well it has certainly been a hectic couple of weeks but I am finally back from India and can get down to some proper training ready for the summer.

My trip to India lasted just over a week with the band and wow was it a life experience. The Indian version of a taxi, a tuk tuk were just amazing in getting you from once place to another, even if you nearly ended up in a crash after being in it for 10 seconds. A quick trip to the Taj Mahal was a sight to behold and will always being a lasting memory of the trip, but the culture is something which I will never forget. The kindness of the people and generosity is something which I will ever forget. With regards to the fitness, there was a top class gym in the hotel with a spa including a steam room where I spent many hours relaxing and great for recovery. Anyway onto the main reason for the blog, developing and changing a workout.

Firstly everyone needs a change from their workout as if you keep following the same routine this will result in a plateau and gains will be slow or become non existence as the body has adapted to the training routine and no longer needs to adapt or grow. It can further make your workout tedious and boring. Therefore to avoid adaptation, variety is the only way. The easiest way of changing workouts is by outlining your goals for a period of time including short and long term goals. The best way to keep track of these are by writing a daily workout log and will help with future references as to what works best and what doesn’t.

So what should you change? Begin with sets and reps. These alone are vital in preventing adaptation by merely changing your sets from 8 reps into the region of 10-12reps. This will change the volume you are putting on the muscle group, even by changing it every other week will be a shock to the system. You can take this further by super setting, which is when you complete two exercises straight after one another, with no rest, pushing the muscle group past exhaustion. This usually consists of a compound exercise followed by an isolated exercise to really exhaust the muscle. Tri-sets which as given in the title, is three exercise is another option.

Alternating the exercise for a workout is another method to avoid the plateau effect. This can be as simple as changing a bench press to a dumbbell press instead, the same basic movement is taking place however in either different muscles are being recruited with a closer grip or wider grip being used therefore working different parts of the chests, meaning growth will occur. This could be a changed to your chest routine each week by using barbells one week and dumbbells the next.

The frequency of your workouts is another thing which can be changed. This could be through in different phrases or goals such as bulking or cutting you could change how many times you train weights or cardio for a period of time. This brings about change to your training not allowing for your body to know what is coming next, leading onto workout length and intensity. The length of your workout can be changed from an hour to 45 minutes, this therefore meaning your session becomes more intense and if you’re on a cutting phrase then you will burn more calories and also have less energy therefore not being able to train for as long. You can go further with intensity by as seen with sets and reps adding more weight causing less reps and working more on strength or upping the reps for a more endurance and cardiovascular workout, when trying to cut. These three are all very close to one another but can bring about a huge change.

I’m not therefore saying you should change your whole workout routine every 8 weeks, but just change little bits about it such as supersets or even just changing from Bench Press to Dumbbell Press this all keeps the body guessing and adaptation to not occurring causing you to plateau. Another quick one is just merely change the order of exercises in your workout, therefore allowing a muscle which would be exhausted at the end of a session to be pushed further due to it being placed at the beginning.

Still bear in mind, 70% diet, 30% gym, so keep that diet strict.

Jack